Archives

Review Roundup

Hey everyone! As you’re reading this, I’m enjoying Day 2 of the CMON Expo. If you’re in the Atlanta area, head down and check it out. It’s a great time had by all. Can’t make it? Be sure to check out the TGN Facebook Page for updates about all the stuff going on here throughout the day.
As for here and now, it’s time for those game reviews I know you all love so much.

Professor Phineas Edmund Hornswoggle, known for building the highest quality airships, has announced his retirement. As one of the greatest airship engineers in the kingdom, you have gathered at the Hornswoggle factory in a competition to build the best airships you can and become the successor to the Hornswoggle empire.

In Dastardly Dirigibles, you will build your airship from different parts of 9 beautiful suits. Each airship is made of 7 cards, each representing a different part of the airship, such as the nose cone or lift engine. Whenever you add a part to your airship, ALL players MUST add the SAME part, even if it means replacing an existing part.

Use Special cards to your advantage or to thwart your opponents. The round ends when the first airship is complete. But you score only the suit used most in your airship. The player with the highest score after 3 rounds wins!

Ivion combines the intensity of a fighting game with the strategy of deck-building card games to create an experience unlike any other. In Ivion, your deck IS your character.

Build your deck from a variety of Classes and Specializations, ranging from the brutal Giant to the occult Ebon Mage. Each character type has numerous cards to choose from, and wildly different play-styles. Mix and match them to create your own, unique character to fight with!

Upon the field of battle, crush your opponent with various strikes, stabs, slashes, spells and other mayhem at your disposal. Be careful, though–they have numerous ways to block, dodge, parry, fizzle and disrupt your assault.

Zombie Tsunami is a party game for 3 to 6 players that plays in under 30 minutes.

In the game, every player leads a horde of zombies storming the city. The winner is the one with the most zombies at the end of a 3 round game. But beware, humans are everywhere and they won’t let you win without a fight.

Players will have to collaborate, bluff, and sometimes betray one another in order to win the game!

You and your adventuring companions are just returning to the bustling city of Greyport after your latest adventure. You are all looking forward to relaxing and spending some of your hard-earned loot at The Red Dragon Inn. The party will have to wait, though, because the city is under attack by evil monsters!
Battle for Greyport is a cooperative deck-building game based on the characters and world of The Red Dragon Inn. You will travel to important locations around the city, fighting epic battles and recruiting whatever heroes and items you can along the way. Each encounter presents more opportunities to improve your deck, but also brings more dire foes for you to face!
With five playable characters, seven different scenarios, and an assortment of variants, you can have a new game every time, adjusting the game’s difficulty as you improve.
Will you defend the city from the monsters and defeat their nefarious boss, or will the city (and the tavern!) be overrun?
The Red Dragon Inn: Battle for Greyport also contains two items for use with any of the standalone The Red Dragon Inn titles: Chronos the Time Mage character deck and Drog’s Special Reserve drink card.

Alexander the Great has conquered a vast empire, but his power is now waning and the time is ripe to compete for his inheritance.

Each player in Phalanxx leads one of four competing factions that are ready to rule that vast empire. To do this, you must become the most powerful faction by reinforcing your troops, ensuring sufficient supplies, and occupying the most important cities and oases.

V-Commandos is a WW2 commandos co-operative board game. Players can either select a pre-generated mission or create their own by combining objective cards, then they assemble a team from famous Allied corps: U.S. Raiders, British SAS., Devil’s Brigade, SOE, etc. During play, you hide in darkness, wear enemy uniforms, and sneak up on your targets. Get spotted? Open fire with emblematic allied weapons and try to turn the enemy’s weapons against them! If you can, get back to cover and turn off the alarms as the enemy has more available troops than you. Thus, you need to focus on completing the mission, then leaving the area as quickly as you can

Mangaka: The Fast & Furious Game of Drawing Comics is a creative fast-paced card game in which players draw comic stories over four rounds combining Themes & an ever-growing number of Trends.

Players start by drawing three Theme Cards (such as “Kaiju/Giant Monsters”, “Robots and Androids,” or “Desire to be a Parent”) to determine the subject matter of their comic. (These three Themes stick with the player throughout the game. Many but not all of the Themes have a manga/anime/Japanese flavor.) Then each player chooses a title and “pen name.”

In Onirim, players are “Dreamwalkers” in a labyrinth. In order to escape, they must discover “oneiric” doors. There are 4 colors of doors and 2 of each color. As players play consecutive cards of the appropriate color and symbol, they unlock the doors. If a player manages to unlock all 8 doors, they win the game.

For a full reading of the rules to understand how complex the card manipulation can get, check out the rules on Z-Man Games’ website.

In Twenty One, players will roll six different colored dice and, depending on the result, write scores onto their sheet. Each sheet contains 6 rows and each player can only write a number the top-most incomplete row.

Players represent different heads of a monster rampaging through a city who must decide to be peaceful or dangerous. Through the course of the game, either the peaceful role player will win subtly or the dangerous players will win by deducing which player is peaceful. As players choose who will control the legs of the monster, they’re also determining the outcome of the game in a way similar to how The Resistance is played.

Neuroshima Hex: Mephisto comes in the standard Neuroshima Hex small-sized expansion box that you’ll immediately toss out once you open it. Like all Neuroshima Hex expansions, the main attraction here is the new army tiles.

Veggie Garden is a game about growing, well, a vegetable garden. Duh. The idea here, though, is that this is a community garden and while you’re trying to make it flourish for everyone, you want to have the richest personal harvest.

As the decision maker in an influential family, it is your goal to grow your wealth by constructing buildings while balancing the social unrest of the new immigrant population. The game is divided into five phases in which players take turns playing action cards and constructing buildings. There are three scoring periods in the game in which players will gain victory based on the type of buildings they’ve constructed. Whoever can collect the most points by game’s end is the victor.

In Dragoon, you take on the role of a dragon forced to deal with the arrival of humans. You’ll need to burn their cities to the ground, or at least subjugate them and take their gold. The first dragony player to reach 50 gold wins the game.

Picture the scene: you’re at a large convention at a popular UK site and you see through the crowd a man wearing a metallic owl on his shoulder, together in Victorian getup and an extendable spyglass fixed to the side of his head. On the streets, this kind of behaviour would usually result in a swift recapture followed by a series of injections and perhaps a straightjacket. In the safe and womb-like environment of the UK Games Expo however, it’s worthy of perhaps a gently raised eyebrow before being distracted by another miniatures vendor. Unless you’re me of course, where Steampunk holds a particular fascination ever since I donned the light gem and began a career as a thief in the PC game… er… Thief.